Purpose of Excavation

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The earth above the west wall of the Lower Building in Rectangles 6 through 10 had remained unexcavated until the 1978 season in order to preserve the wall from erosion. It was then decided in June 1978 to remove this earth and uncover this foundation wall so that it could then be drawn by the architect and incorporated into the master plan of the site.

This earth above the west wall of the Lower Building, referred to as the "mud wall" in I.E. bks. II-IV and as the "dike" in BP-MF bl. I, runs north-south through Grid 5 of Rectangle 6, F-J only [see I.E. bk. II, drawing p.178 ], Rectangle 7, Rectangle 8 and Rectangle 9 [for drawing of R8 and R7 see E.N. bk. 3, pp.1-2 ; for R9, see BP-MF bk. 1, pp.1-2 ]. The height varies from 25-30cm in Rectangle 9 to 45cm in Rectangle 7. In addition, a few places along this strip of earth have been previously excavated; these areas include:

R9 E/F 5 in 1975 [ BP-MF, bk. 1, p.140 and drawing p.62 ]

R8 B 5 in 1972 [ E.N. bk. 3, p.110 ]

R7 B-C 5, F 5 in 1972 [ E.N. bk. 3, p.94 ]

R6 F-G 5 [ I.E. bk. 2, drawing p.178 ]

R10 D/E 2, 3/4 [ MF bk. I, p.124 and drawing p.114 ].

The grid designations employed in this book are those established by each of the previous excavators in their respective rectangles (see drawing previous. Groundsplans laying out the grid system in each Rectangle are found in the works cited in the previous paragraph). The normal plan has a letter grid denoting E-W coordinates and a numeral grid marking N-S points; this means that the walls runs through Grid 5 throughout its course. However, this system holds true only for Rectangles 6,7,8, and 9. For some unexplained reason, the system was reversed in R10 (see MF. bk. I, p.3 , but drawing p.114 ) and continued in R11, although in this instance the letter grids are unaligned with those of R10 (see JH bk. 1, p.71 ). Consequently, in R10 the wall now runs through a N-S grid of D/E and in R11 an F grid.